by Chris Chase, USA TODAY Sports

by Chris Chase, USA TODAY Sports

"This calls for wisdom: let the one who has understanding calculate the number of the beast, for it is the number of a man, and his number is 666."

-- Revelation 13:18, English Standard Bible

And so it was that on the morn of the 666th Monday Night Football game in the course of mankind, Timothy Richard Tebow noticed this numerical oddity and took to the mount to declare his righteousness against the mark of the beast.

On the second Monday of October, Tebow took a respite from reading his papyrus playbook to declare his intentions for the eve. He thusly wrote on Twitter, "looking forward to giving God all the glory in tonight's 666th Monday Night Football game. Romans 8:37-39."

I'm down with Tebow's religious beliefs and appreciate that he uses his forum to promote them, but I'm not sure what he was going for here. Does playing in a game number that's identical to the mark of the beast worry him? Or is anything with the number 666 a good way to promote his faith?

The Bible verse Tebow references in the tweet says: "For I am convinced that neither death nor life, neither angels nor demons, neither the present nor the future, nor any powers, neither height nor depth, nor anything else in all creation, will be able to separate us from the love of God."

Tebow mentions MNF's 666th game, generally implying that it's tainted by the affiliation with the second beast of Revelation. Then he quotes a passage on how nothing can come between love. If my exegesis is correct (and I did get a C+ in freshman year Bible study at Wake Forest), Tebow's tweet unintentionally reads like a roundabout diss of Howard Cosell and Jon Gruden.

Now that he plays for the Jets, we're sure it's also completely accidental that the Bible verse right before Romans 8:37-39 has to do with sheeps being led to the slaughter.

Note: Other Bible translation use equivalent Gettysburg Address style for the mark of the beast. In the King James Version, for instance, "666" is written "six hundred threescore and six." Since the Jets rarely score three times, we thought it'd be mean to include this.